A veteran CBC television personality, Terry Milewski is one of Canada’s best-known broadcast journalists. He’s reported the news from 52 countries over the past 44 years—and was the CBC’s very first Middle East correspondent. Today, he speaks on how a free and functional media is crucial to a democratic society—and how Canada can lead the charge for a world that’s still committed to the truth.

Terry Milewski has been a reliable fixture on Canadian televisions for decades. He began his storied career with the CBC as a local reporter in Calgary. He then jumped to the national news division as a science reporter before becoming a parliamentary correspondent. Milewski opened the CBC’s Jerusalem bureau in the mid-80s and became The National’s first Middle East correspondent. Since then, his thousands of assignments—including eight years as Washington correspondent for the CBC—have taken him all over Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East, giving him a rich, nuanced understanding of global politics. After forty years of journalism, he retired from regular broadcasting as the CBC’s senior correspondent in Ottawa, but still appears frequently on the air and online.

Speech Topics

MCs & Entertainers

An Evolving CanadaReporting the Past, Present, and Future of Our Nation

For the past 44 years, veteran reporter Terry Milewski has witnessed—and reported on—Canada’s most important milestones. As senior political correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa, Milewski was often the first journalist to ask a pointed question or chase a story right to its source. And from his work abroad in over 50 countries, he knows exactly what makes Canada great. But for all there is to celebrate, he also knows that we can never rest on our laurels. In this keynote—one that speaks to both an incredible career and to our evolving nation—Milewski speaks on where Canada’s been, where we are today, and what the future has in store.

Politics & Society

Canada’s CommitmentsUpholding the Truth in a World of Fake News

Around the world, populists and nationalists—on both ends of the political spectrum—are pushing back against immigration and globalization. Their leaders are, in many cases, racist and proto-fascist, with a deep disrespect for free press, evidence-based reporting, democratic processes, and institutions themselves. They recoil at the thought of a borderless, interconnected world and are swift to censor, or erase, dissenting opinions. But here, in Canada, we have the sunny-days, media-friendly liberalism of Trudeau—and often the naive sense that what’s happening around the world couldn’t happen here.

To Terry Milewski, Canada’s not immune to the rising tide of fake news (or “alternative facts”) and fake strongmen. How robust are our cherished institutions: our independent judiciary, our free press, our reverence for facts? In this keynote, Milewski speaks on the challenge of preserving what makes Canada great today, and for the next 150 years—and reminds free-thinking citizens of their own role in making sure of it.